For long, the Left Front’s adversaries have accused it of “scientific rigging” in the Marxist bastion without much luck, but this time around, a “grim picture” began unraveling itself when Election Commission teams today carried out random checks following Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s complaint about bogus voters.

The EC teams, carrying a list of 120 suspect voters provided by Banerjee, were stunned to find at least 53 of them having the same EPIC number.

Two days back, Banerjee had submitted a list of 46,000 “bogus” voters in Kolkata South and Jadavpur to the Chief Election Commissioner, who was in the state capital to take stock of the poll preparedness.

Two EC teams on Saturday found many instances of multiple entries of voters against the same Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers. A report with the findings will be submitted to the state’s Chief Electoral Officer Debasish Sen soon.

Calling it a “grim picture”, a team member said they had found 46 persons in the voters’ list having the same EPIC number, without actually having an EPIC card in Garia area of Jadavpur constituency. He said since checking addresses of all the “fake voters” is not feasible, the team decided to conduct a random door-to-door survey on 120 people.

The investigation started early in the morning with a three-member team visiting Srerampore -I and Srerampore-II in Garia. As many as 53 people in the area were found to be “fake voters”, with 46 of them having the same EPIC number (WB/18/108/595). The rest too had almost the same EPIC number (WB/18/108/000595).

During the drive, one Krishna Singh, with EPIC number WB/18/108/595, was found to be a resident of Bihar. He had been casting his votes for the last 20 years without actually possessing an EPIC card. Asked for an identity proof, he reportedly could show none to the EC team.

During the survey, the team was reportedly shadowed by a local team of youths, who identified themselves as belonging to the ruling party. They repeatedly told the team Singh’s identity proof had been misplaced and would be produced later. As per Singh’s submission, he used to cast his vote every election by taking the non-EPIC slips.

Gulmarg Begum, a resident of Srerampore in Garia, also had the same EPIC number. She too could not produce any identity proof. There were several other such instances, said the source.

The team leader, Mukesh Singh, refused to elaborate. “We will submit our report to the Chief Electoral Officer Debashis Sen by tomorrow,” said Singh. Sen could not be contacted despite several attempts.